


A Slave's Choice

by Lilith Sedai (TAFKAB)



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: BDSM, Betrayal, Character Death, M/M, Political Alliances, Sith, dark themes, heavy SM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 08:40:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11309793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TAFKAB/pseuds/Lilith%20Sedai
Summary: The Emperor's pet makes a difficult decision.  (An old story)





	A Slave's Choice

He had once been a Jedi, and that was perhaps the most difficult thing to endure, after so many years and their attendant horrors. He knelt quietly, effaced and obedient, head bent forward, eyes fixed on the intricate tiles of the mosaic beneath his knees. He thought that this room had been preserved in part as a deliberate torment for him; the ruling body it had once held had frequently annoyed, irritated, and disgusted him... but the one that had replaced it...

A shiver ran through his body that had nothing to do with the scant garment he was permitted. His master's hand fell lazily over the arm of the throne, dangling in front of him in an absent search for him, for the exotic pet. In a habit to which he had long become resigned, he lifted his head, long hair whispering over his shoulders, to nuzzle and lick at the angling fingers, resolutely accepting the spike of shame that stabbed his soul.

He had done far worse in his long lifetime. He was glad that now there was only a single act more terrible than this that remained to be asked of him.

Anakin's eyes were on him now, the lad only in his middle twenties, but already wearing the large powerful body of a man in his prime, combined with the soul of a hateful child: petulant and cruel, far more than when they had first met. He suppressed regret that they had ever done so, suckling his master's fingers one by one, uncomfortably aware of the heat in the young man's eyes as he watched this little ritual that was both a humiliation and a taunt. Anakin flipped shaggy hair out of his sullen face, the rosebud mouth gone hard and cruel, the open blue eyes gone shuttered slate-gray.

"He'll turn on you one day," Anakin warned sharply, narrowing his eyes at the Emperor.

"Will he?" The voice was dry but amused, and the fingers withdrew from the slave's mouth, returning to knot into his hair. "And why is that? For a chance to ally with you and find himself bound belly-down in your bed for his troubles?" The laughter was incongruously light. "We both know his feelings in that matter, don't we, pet." The jerk to his hair was firm, but unneeded; he was already nodding, a flicker of sorrow well-hidden inside him as Anakin's eyes grew even colder.

He met Anakin's icy stare calmly; gauging the man's temper and his closeness to the breaking point. He was young and strong, in the prime of his life, and nothing sated him. An ocean of blood could not do it, nor could the bodies of a thousand lovers. The Dark Side was stronger in him than in anyone else Qui-Gon Jinn had ever seen, and it would not be governed.

No, for all his subservience he would not willingly go to Anakin Skywalker's bed; daily he thanked the Force for the few shreds of mercy which remained in his fate, thanked all the universe for not being required to do so. Anakin was vicious; there was no thread of mercy in his soul for his one-time Jedi master. Fortunately, the Emperor was jealous of the attentions of his personal pleasure slave. But the situation between Sith Master and Sith Apprentice was tenuous; Anakin was the more powerful of the two Sith. The Emperor knew that Skywalker would attempt to rise against his master one day-- just as he had risen and slain his own.

Already the slave had intervened once against such an attempt; as Anakin's fist flexed unconsciously he could tell he would soon have to take that risk again. There were no longer any Force inhibitors in his collar, he was both pet and guardian to his master. Why should he fight? There was nothing left to fight for. He had surrendered honor and soul long ago.

"Bring us wine," his master snapped with a tug at his hair, mood changing with mercurial suddenness, and he rose gracefully to his feet, making a cautious circuit around Skywalker. The low-slung, translucent gauze trousers he wore over his hips and legs could hardly be labeled a covering; they were slashed down the sides all the way from waist to ankle and draped revealingly over his genitals. Anakin licked his lips, turning to watch him move, defiant against the Emperor. The black-cloaked ruler merely sat, watching everything darkly from behind steepled fingertips.

"My master," he knelt before the Emperor with a filled crystal goblet, lifting it to his lips and tasting it, a self-imposed duty, holding perfectly still for a long moment, searching for toxins in the fluid that trickled down his throat and dispersed throughout his body. He offered up the cup in both hands, eyes meeting the hood-shadowed gaze. His master smiled thinly and accepted it, drinking deeply.

He returned to the chalice to serve Skywalker, ignoring the hot eyes that raked his body. He stood before the young man, offering the cup without obeisance; anger raged in Anakin's cold eyes, but the Emperor's slave owed humility to none, other than his own master. "Anakin," he nodded with polite, detached reserve, clothed in the tattered remnants of his dignity, a faint echo of what he had once been.

"Lord Vader!" the response was a growl; behind him their master chuckled, well-pleased with both his servants.

"Attend me." The Emperor gestured lazily, and the slave resumed his kneeling position beside the throne. The Sith resumed their conversation, and as always he listened. Once he had thought he might use the information he overheard in some desperate plot to redeem himself. He smiled bitterly, the expression hidden by his bowed head. It had always been a lie.

"I have brought a bounty," Anakin announced, and the slave flinched, drawing back imperceptibly, battling a horror that had become as familiar to him as breathing. His eyes fastened to the door, and guardsmen entered bearing a rough cloth sack, its bottom crusted with dry, blackened blood. They upended the sack and two heads rolled from its depths-- Saesee Tiin and his padawan learner Fiarae, eyes open and sightless, features smeared with crusted blood.

Bile rose in his throat and he bent his head to his knees, anguished-- and consumed with guilt, for he was glad. Glad that neither of the heads which rolled on the floor of the throne room belonged to Yoda... glad that they did not belong to... he bit his lower lip viciously, blood gathering in his mouth. His own head should have lain on the floor of this chamber long ago. He would bear the shame of that omission into the Force for all eternity.

"He eludes you still." The Emperor was displeased, his voice dropped to a purring whisper. "And where has he hidden Amidala?"

"I will have Yoda!" Both Anakin's fists clenched now. "It is only a matter of time."

"So you say, and yet we both know where he is hiding, we have both known for nearly a year, and always you return to me without fulfilling my orders." A snake on silk, the voice whispered with venomous threat. Qui-Gon stilled; this was news, and among the worst he'd ever heard.

"We cannot dispose of him yet; he is our last link to my wife."

Qui-Gon looked at Anakin with interest, feeling a momentary flicker of... something. Something Anakin Skywalker used to be, something that the Emperor's cruelty and manipulation had not quite managed to drive from his apprentice. Yet. Such flickers had been more frequent, at first. They were almost gone now, almost beaten down and washed away beneath a black tide of constant fury.

"Get out. Do not come back until you have news that I wish to hear." The Emperor rose, abruptly tossing aside his goblet, which shattered, blood-red wine oozing over the floor. Anakin hesitated a moment, bowed, and stepped away, black boots striking the tiles crisply, with more than a hint of menace. The Emperor turned his back on his slave and his apprentice, gazing out the wide windows at the traffic streaming past in the afternoon sky.

The slave rose, unbidden, and moved to clear the floor. He lifted Saesee's head first, holding it between shuddering palms, reaching for calm and Force, dissolving the matter away gently, releasing the dead Jedi into the afterlife. Though the tissue needed for cloning had already been taken, he would do this thing. It was all he could do, all that was left. Then Fiarae, the released souls mingling and fading with all possible speed, leaving behind a resonance of horror and pity as they sensed what he had become.

Blood from his bitten lip dripped on the floor; he took the abandoned cloth sack and wiped up the droplets and the wine, gathering the fragmented crystal, heedless of razor-edges that sliced his hands shallowly, heedless of his own blood staining the cloth he held.

I caused this. I made this happen. I let this happen. Bitterness with every heartbeat, every breath, every drop of welling blood. He might as well have killed those Jedi-- every Jedi-- himself.

The Emperor turned, gazing at him austerely. "Put that aside." He pushed back his hood, a ray of sunlight gilding the left profile of the still- young face, bringing out the shades of red-gold in the long, immaculately tended hair, graying at the temples much faster than it should as a result of the devouring power of the Dark Force.

"Yes, my Master." The slave laid the bloodstained bundle of glass shards next to the serving platter that held the chalice of wine. Hands trembling, he turned to face his master.

Emperor Kenobi glided forward to stand in front of his slave, gazing up into his face with narrowed, speculative eyes, fingertips moving to the band of the low-slung harem trousers that barely clung to the muscular swell of his slave's hips. The gauze ties parted at a touch, lightweight fabric floating to the floor, pooling around the slave's ankles.

"Will you turn on me?" there was something hard in his eyes that eclipsed the seemingly guileless, vulnerable tone of his voice, rendering the question dangerous and threatening.

"No, my master," he replied, voice a weary mockery of serenity.

The Emperor's narrow lips curved in a painfully familiar half-smile, and his hand curled around his slave's heavy, swelling penis, stroking its half-erect length possessively. "Not today," he agreed with cool complacency, a shaft of clear light catching his eyelashes and gilding them, illuminating the blue-green depths of his eyes until it almost seemed that the darkness they contained had burned away. His thumb wandered over the tip of the slave's erection, and he released it, lifting his hand for his slave to lick away the salty wetness.

A moment more while the slave's tongue played, eyes searching faces-- one for signs of love, the other for evidence of rebellion-- and then the slave was caught in claws of Dark Force, shoved face-down across the table. Kicking apart his slave's ankles, the Emperor tore open his robes and buried himself inside the always-prepared body with a single rough stroke.

The Emperor's elegant, manicured hands slid under his slave's body, one jerking rhythmically on the shaft of his erection, the other cleverly twisting and tugging at the ring that pierced his right nipple. This, this was his reward and his punishment. This was his life and his love. Qui- Gon Jinn moaned his submission, moaned his passion, his hands clutching convulsively at the far edge of the narrow table as he was mounted and roughly used.

Each stroke seared through him with the force he remembered from the one-time Sith apprentice's near-fatal lightsaber stroke. His padawan had saved him then, saved him and left him with Anakin Skywalker in tow as his padawan while Qui-Gon spent the next months in bacta and years in physical therapy, recovering. Then, at the Supreme Chancellor's request, Knight Kenobi had undertaken to become the temporary Senate Liaison to Naboo.

Qui-Gon gasped as the ring twisted viciously; the Emperor had sensed his inattention, and the hand that had been pleasuring him shifted to his testicles, squeezing a threat. He dismissed his thoughts and melted on the table, surrendering to the sensation of the man thrusting inside him, the faint chafe of the gauze about his ankles, the quick surges of pleasure from the penetration and the warning twinge of pain from the firm grasp that ensured his continued attention. He would not be allowed to come this time.

His master prided himself on his ability to control Qui-Gon's rebellious Light through the granting and withholding of pleasure. He was a shrewd man, well capable of calculating the reaction of an entire governmental body to either the most insidious or the most outrageous pronouncements. He rarely made errors. He'd been trained well, and his ability to read the paths of possible futures was nothing short of uncanny.

His gasp heralded the flood of his seed inside Qui-Gon's body, and looking back, Qui-Gon could already see his attention wandering toward other matters as he pulled out and wiped himself casually on Qui-Gon's single garment. He crumpled the ruined fabric and tore it from Qui-Gon's ankles. It flared into flame, crisped to ash, and scattered in the draft.

"Go," he said simply as he turned back toward his throne, and Qui-Gon obeyed.

"Yes, my master."

The corridors were wide and nearly empty. Sycophants who might otherwise have been stationed to intercept his master in an attempt to curry favor had chosen discretion as the better part of valor, knowing that Anakin was in the palace.

He could still see the currents in the Living Force, though it was forbidden to reach out and gather them or to weave them for his use unless he did so in his master's presence and with his master's permission. However, sometimes only his presence was required to tease a flow away from the grain, to alter the warp and woof of act and consequence, to change the nature of the flow subtly toward a better result. He had become very adept at tending his few flowers among the garden of black thorns, a whisper at a time.

The currents were volatile today, guiding his feet further into the palace, toward a well-known destination. He tapped at a door and let himself in, still a little self-conscious of his modesty after all these years.

Her hair was iron gray now, and the repair jobs she was given to complete were minor at best, but she was untouchable in the palace, and many who were prudent feared her: Lord Vader's-- Anakin Skywalker's-- mother, Shmi, one of only two beings alive who could contradict him without earning automatic and swift death. She stood firm, drawing on a soul-deep core of strength built during years spent as a slave in the deserts of Tatooine, as different from her son as dawn from dark.

After years of bitterness, she had at last forgiven Qui-Gon for Anakin's fate, and they worked together in service to a greater cause. It was expedient and necessary.

She took in Qui-Gon's state of undress with an unsurprised eye and moved to take a robe from her closet. He accepted and wrapped it around himself with gratitude.

"Is all in readiness?"

"It is." She did not move her hand to the folds of her skirt, though her belt hung heavy. Instead she extended her left hand, holding a collar with a small square box attached. Qui-Gon's. She had repaired a broken comm unit that summoned him to his master's pleasure, damaged when her own son struck him to the floor.

"I am grateful." Smooth words, and Qui-Gon's mind lightly tapped at the omnipresent video pickup as he approached her; his master might feel such a touch but Qui-Gon had grown quite skilled at using the tiniest flicker of power imaginable, and for the shortest possible moment as he moved.

When he drew back, the collar dangled innocently from his hand, and now the belt of his garment sagged instead of hers. The 'droids who watched the monitors were unlikely to notice such a subtle detail.

"You have done fine work." Qui-Gon lifted his hands to his neck and replaced his current collar with the new one. The blood-red jewel at his throat pulsed once quietly and then glowed with a steady, oppressive gleam that meant his status was once again displayed upon the computer screens of the dispassionate palace monitors, subject to their constant vigil.

He moved toward the window; unlike most rooms in the palace, Shmi's had a broad view out into the heart of Coruscant's elite government district. A billion ships and cars flowed in steady patterns on the distant horizon, most of them shunted away from the palace to preserve the purity of the Emperor's view, except for a few delivering passengers to the Senate chambers. The Senate... the name remained only as a polite fiction; the building now housed only a nominal parliament of governors that made minimal policy decisions and delivered Imperial orders to their individual home-worlds.

Qui-Gon felt the currents stir again, more strongly this time, and drew his spine upright, his breath catching in his chest. The Dark Force moved sinuously around him too, twining with the Living Force, roiling in building threat. With much pain and difficulty he had learned to read its motion as well, against the day when he would need the critical edge that it would give him.

It was very nearly time.

Qui-Gon reached out to the video pickup again without moving from his place at the window; the mechanism was intimately familiar to him now, after long years of study. The Dark Force was surging; he could taste Anakin's signature in it and feel the Emperor's wrath cresting to meet the threat in black tendrils of fury. He was needed.

A renewed flicker of Qui-Gon's tightly leashed power crippled the video pickup for good, and Qui-Gon turned to Shmi, who watched him anxiously. She was like a beacon in the Force, shining all the brighter for the blackness that settled around them. A wisp of acrid smoke curled from the ruined camera. Droids would come to fix it in a matter of minutes; too late.

"Go to the children. Move them. My master confirmed that they have learned Yoda's location. Yoda will not move; it's only a matter of time before they take him. They could break him, make him speak..." if Anakin knew Shmi was aware of their location, they would break her, too, mother or no. "They could break me, as well, and then you, if you remain. Move them, stay with them, and care for them."

He moved to her work desk, sweeping away the accumulated parts there, and began to type on a portable data unit, and typed in the codes she would need to make her escape. Fools frequently assumed that slaves had no ears.

"Now?" She blinked, staring about wildly, as though she could see the Force-currents herself, and perhaps she could. Perhaps she could, in her limited way. "Come with me." Her gnarled hands clutched in her skirts, one lifting to reach out to him even as she took the unit with the other. "The children will need you."

Qui-Gon smiled in spite of himself, and shook his head. "It is too late for me. I think that I will not raise another Skywalker to darkness." She recoiled, dread and fear in her eyes. "Better that they remain untouched by me." The jewel pulsed hotly against his neck. "I must go to my master."

He left her without looking back; her fate was in the hands of the Force now. He could feel her running, a bright star eclipsed by devouring blackness as her presence receded.

Qui-Gon strolled leisurely through the palace in answer to the Emperor's urgent summons. Perhaps the courtiers and sycophants were also sensitive to the disturbance he sensed in the Force; none were in evidence now, though no alarms bleated. Anakin knew enough to disarm them, given that the Imperial Guard had thwarted his first try. He'd been younger then, and overconfident.

The throne room doors yielded to Qui-Gon's palm print, and a sizzle and crackle of lightsabers greeted him as he stepped inside. The combatants noted him peripherally, Anakin spitting a curse. Qui-Gon palmed the door shut again, resting his back against the wall.

They were evenly matched and darkly beautiful, bathed in red and blue, sparks showering from each meeting of their blades. There seemed little to choose from between them-- Obi-Wan the more cunning, Anakin the more savage, both of them steeped so firmly in darkness that it seemed inconceivable the Dark Side could ever relinquish their souls.

He could feel his master's confidence surge, bolstered by his presence; paradoxically, the presence of his honest and unchanging love strengthened Emperor Kenobi. Perhaps the Dark could love as well, in its own twisted way. It would be a subject worthy of study, if a Force-sensitive scholar were given the proper opportunity. It was a gamble Qui-Gon Jinn had spent many years preparing to take.

Qui-Gon's hand moved toward the weight at his hip; he drew on the Force and blocked a chair flung by the power of Anakin's mind. The strength of the Dark Force shivered him, but he changed the trajectory by a few inches, sparing Emperor Kenobi's head. A small aid, but a critical one. The only edge his master needed.

Anakin grew in power daily. Already he exceeded his Emperor in all but bladework, which is why this contest had come to that: Obi-Wan's choice. Come to the Jedi late, Anakin would never possess the instinctive grace with a weapon that Obi-Wan Kenobi had, no matter how he trained or how the obsidian power of the dark flowed in him.

"I will crush you both." Anakin's voice grated, hardly sounding human in its ugliness and hate.

Qui-Gon would never be able to comprehend why Obi-Wan had never disposed of Anakin and taken a safer lieutenant. Perhaps his hubris had clouded the clarity of his foresight. It would not be the first time such a thing had happened, and Qui-Gon hoped it would not be the last.

He tested the Force again, burning chill leaching into him at the touch of the hatred in the room, tugging at his brain like insidious tendrils of madness. Whispering to him like a lover, the Dark Force crept in around the edges of his mind. Qui-Gon let it. Long ago he had realized that darkness and light lay within everyone, even the Jedi. Long ago he had realized that you could not excise one and contain only the other.

It was a lesson neither of the men before him would learn until it was too late.

The object was in his hand now, a neat cylindrical weight, reminding him perversely of how often he had held an erection in his hand: his own or Obi-Wan's. The sensation of his fingers curling around this weapon was a similar, terrible pleasure.

Qui-Gon felt the Force singing to him like a siren, promising power-- control of his fate, of his body and of his destiny. He smiled and embraced its promise.

The searing bar of energy that grew at the touch of his finger felt white-hot like orgasm, and seemed as beautiful to him now, in this moment. No trace of color darkened his blade, an irony given the taint upon his soul.

It stunned them; the fight before his eyes paused and Anakin faltered, his concentration breaking; Obi-Wan pressed his attack, and his saber seared Anakin's flesh, severing his arm at the shoulder, drawing a short howl of anguish and fury as he stumbled back.

The Force shifted, skewing wildly, futures birthed and dying in the drops of blood, dropping like sparks glinting from Anakin's ruined shoulder, his black body armor melted and smoking. The image burned into Qui-Gon's brain with the vivid clarity of prophecy, and he felt rightness whisper to him, a promise of completion in the Force, and knew what he must do.

Qui-Gon walked forward, shedding his robe, unafraid in his nakedness, clothed in purpose. Two against one was hardly a fair fight, but Qui-Gon suspected the man the galaxy knew as Lord Vader was more than equal to his own defense, with escape routes to spare. Even now troops flowed about the room, but they were organics, not mechanicals. The Living Force told Qui-Gon that without effort. They were not of the Emperor's guard; the Force currents whispered of defeat and victory.

Anakin stepped back, clutching his shoulder, hissing hate and fear. Qui-Gon held his eyes without wavering. Emperor Kenobi laughed, exultant. "Excellent, my pet! We shall finish him, and then you will share my bed...."

Qui-Gon swung his blade with silent sternness, a clean slice and then a feint, his blade flashing up and across in deadly reversal. The shining white beam dove into the Emperor's flesh with a whispering hiss, cleaving his neck with deadly grace. His head fell from his neck, body toppling, its grace abruptly stolen.

Qui-Gon fell to his knees, saber extinguishing as it clattered across the floor. He did not reach for it, catching Obi-Wan's head to himself instead and cradling it to his chest.

Light and darkness played and warred in beautiful terrible balance. A billion shades of shadow and brilliance lay in the infinite depth of Obi-Wan's eyes, repeated into infinity throughout the universe, and still Qui-Gon could not find the certainty of love there, or forgiveness.

So be it.

Confusion gathered; the eyes grew vague. They reflected a red glow even as they faded-- the merciless approach of Anakin's blade. Time was short.

Qui-Gon summoned the Force, feeling it gather at his call. The silky hair between his fingers melted away, leaving his hands and his heart empty. He drew deeper and felt the Force grant him the power of the old masters, who could disperse their whole bodies into the Force, safe from cloning or medical intervention, safe at last from a life that was worse than death.

Searing light pierced him and he welcomed it, its burn the last sensation he would ever know.


End file.
